re: Corn beef/ pastrami making thread..

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And the tractor maintains my 25 acres. Feel free to come bushhog. I'll give you a Rueben.

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Nice size piece of land there, and I hope for you it's not all cleared and needs cutting. I know if I had that large a piece of land, there'd be a nice pond on it, and stocked with something I can eat.

That old propane tank smoker will be around for ages since that is some thick metal they use to make them.

Oh, and that Rueben better be one hell of a sandwich, and it wouldn't hurt to throw in a couple beers.

Hell yeah, I made a few of these last year using that Katz’s recipe posted earlier in the thread. Pastrami reubens were our go to with it, they were outstanding. I had some smothered cabbage we used instead of kraut. After reading through several russian dressing recipes I settled on this one, worth a try if you don’t already have one. LINK

Well here’s how it turned out






Overall I’m pleased with my first effort. It was real tender, moist and had good flavor but a little on the salty side. Gumbo was right when he said I may have too much salt in my brine. Either that or I should have went 6-7 days instead of 10. Lesson learned. It makes for a damn fine sandwich. The Russian salad dressing recipe that was posted was very good too.

Ps- Sam’s has these fall festive paper plates on sale, 300 for like $9

Looks awesome. Did you simply rinse it and immediately smoke? Or soak it? Every pastrami recipe I read says to soak it in water no less than 24hrs, and even recommend changing the water a few times throughout. I’ve always done this and never had any sort of over-salt problem. That may be why some of yall are having salt issues.

I did not soak. Just rinsed the hell out of it. I ran across some recipes here and there that mentioned soaking, but I think most just said to rinse it well. I will definitely try the soaking thing next time. As well as cutting down a little on the salt in the brine

Good looking end product you have there Balls.

And I've always just taken the meat out of the brine, rinsed it, patted it dry and then got to cooking it. I've never done the soak method and change water, but that would remove some of the salt, but I'd be leery of it removing some of the other seasonings as well.

That looks terrific!

Ya done a fine job

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168 deg internal. Wrapped it and put it in the oven on 250 to get thru the stall and up to temp.

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What was your final meat temp? You said earlier you may shoot for about 200.

I'm dry brining a flat to smoke this weekend per the Virtual Weber site recipe. First time taking on pastrami.

The recipe I'm following says smoke to 165, then wrap and put in a chest for a couple hours. Saw another that said 170. But Meathead says for best crust smoke to 203. Someone mentioned that taking it that high may make it fall apart and not sliceable.

Any experience out there anyone can share?